its been over a year now and its still top few played on steam. Dont get me wrong i thought it was fun for 20-30 hours, after that everything got so repetative and boring.

just adding:What happens with me is i think ill play it to much, like 5-10 hours over a weekend, and then life distracts me and i just forget about it a month or 2 before i go back at it... i spend more time finding mods then i do playing them i think lol

Well, the mods is probably the reason I play as much as I do. Other than that, if it was possible to have more choices that would actually make a difference on the game. But other than that, I highly understand how people can still like this. It has a charm, and a feel people love. Some people don't have this, but just like WoW (which should have been dead like 5 years ago) it has it's charm, and people love that.

Trust me, like many people before me said....The library of Mods for this game make it 10 times better than the Vanilla version (which was good also). Me and my roomate like alot of the same Mods but we play it differently. I like to use survival Mods mostly and stay in the wilderness, he likes to build houses and complete quest lines that involve joining groups and guilds. The MODS range from graphic improvments, adding items and weapons/armor, new quest lines and NPC's; to entire new lands.

I've put the 20 or 30 hours that you enjoyed it into just walking around the woods looking around, I'm sure. I've got 300+ now and there are problems with the game but I don't know of any other the exploration and customization that this does while having immersive graphics and extensive modding.

Some people play different characters for different experiences, some people like the mods, and if you're an explorer, Skyrim's so large, you can play for over 700 hours (like me), and still find new stuff. Heck - look at Morrowind - people are still playing (and buying) that game after TEN years!

It was hard for me to get into the game at first. I got to the point where you have to find Esbern in the main storyline (not very far) before I quit. After almost a year of being out, I thought I'd give it another try, since I had a few friends who still played it hardcore since it came out, telling me about new things always coming up. A couple of times a week I would browse the workshop for good mods (lore friendly and immersion mods are the way to go). I now have around 25 mods I use frequently (Immersive Armors, Cloaks of Skyrim, Left Handed Rings, Run For Your Lives, Static Mesh Improvement Improvement, RNG Dynamic Guards, just to name a few). They really add immersion and flavor to the game.

After you mess around in the workshop give the Skyrim Nexus a look, and get some SKSE mods a try (a common mod being SkyUI and Categorized Favorites, which are great). Search for BOSS on Nexus once you've got some mods under your belt, read about it. If you can't tell, getting into the story is a big factor for me. I wouldn't touch the console, it totally kills the game in my opinion. Also, I don't restrict myself to a certain playstyle (like focusing only in magic, or only sword and shield), being able to do whatever you want is awesome. It's a little dull in the beginning but once you start getting skills and shouts it gets better.

I don't really know what happened but I really got into it, and I now consider this one of my favorite games of all time. I've only just started the Dawnguard quests and still have lots and lots of contents to explore in the vanilla game. As the Elder Scrolls are on sale right now, I just bought TESIII and IV and plan on spending lots of time playing those. How could I have overlooked these games all my life?

its a miracle that a game that bad is still popular, i guess the casual masses never played a rpg before, and skyrim is their initiation rite or somenthing like that, anyway, skyrim is the worst elder scrolls out there, don't bother with it...